Because it's the fun thing to these days, and because I hate every French politician imaginable, why not offend everybody with one of these?

1958

France was in deep sh**t in 1958. The Fourth Republic had proven to be a disaster, because Parliament had way too much fun in holding random Radical and old collabo notables hostage and forcing them to bribe them with whatever it is they wanted. Parliament apparently got bored and decided to screw around everybody by changing governments each they time they changed socks. By 1956, Parliament either decided that it liked stinky socks or fell on its head because it allowed Mitt Romney Guy Mollet, a good friend of the Earl of Suez and a man who could be intimidated by tomatoes, to stay in office for over a year. Over a year? For Christ's sake guys. Government stability ought to be illegal. This is no fun!

Meanwhile, in Algeria, the white men were getting scared sh**tless. I mean, they were at serious risk of losing their ability to steal the country's resource and treat the browns like slaves. What had the world come to? No respect for authority, I tell you. For some reason, if the white man in Algeria was scared sh**tless, the old white men in Paris were in turn scared by the white man in Algeria who often wore a military uniform. In May 1958, Parliament was busy deciding on which old white man to pick to be Prime-Minister-for-a-Month, so a bunch of crazy old military officers including fascists, nutjobs, crazies and so forth, took power in Algiers. Military coups? This is France, not fu-king Bolivia. Grow up.

Eventually, the coup scared the old geezers in Paris sh**tless, so they turned to Charles de Gaulle. Charles de Gaulle, who after the war had become a drama queen, liked to stage hissy fits and then go sulk in his corner and think that people would beg him to return. In 1951, he got tired of waiting for nobody, so he created his own party, which wasn't a party, but which was run like a East European Marxist party but certainly wasn't Marxist. After that failed, he threw another fit and promptly return to meditation in his home in some tiny redneck village.

The Fourth Republic's bigwigs had signed a secret deal vowing to never ever ever talk to the General, unless the sh**t hit the fan in a big way. Sadly for them, it did, and having run out of contestants for the office of Prime-Minister-for-a-Month, they were compelled to turn to him. Of course, he was all smiles, but his enemies were scared he'd do a Napoleon on them. Still, he was able to convince them to allow him to write a new constitution - he wanted to wipe his ass with the old constitution (which was one of the only things it was good for) - which he promptly did.

In December 1958, according to the constitution, some 80,000 elected officials - most of them from towns with 2 people each - got together to watch porn to elect a President. There were three candidates. The General, obviously. The Commies, who hated the General because he was a fascist, put up some old Stalinist whackjob/troll named Georges Marrane. A bunch of lefties who didn't like the Stalinists but hated the General convinced themselves that more than five people in the world shared their views. This is, of course, a time honoured tradition in France, convincing yourself that the random sh**t you believe in and the retarded ideas you hold are shared by more people than you, your parents, your dead dog and your deaf blind grandmother. At any rate, these trolls nominated Albert Châtelet, a mathematician (for reals, guys?).

Of course, the General won - with 78.5%. The Joe Stalin United FC got 13%. But the most surprising is that the jokers on the left found that 6.721 people agreed with them. Six thousand people? Wow. That's 8.5%. I suppose some people out there either (a) liked math teachers, (b) were in the Leon Trotsky fan club, (c) like to joke around a lot or (d) were collabos who held grudges.

Logged

17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

Our numbers are dwindling. Our words are confused. Some of them have been twisted by the enemyuntil they can no longer be recognized.

Now what is wrong, or false, in what we have said?Just some parts, or everything?On whom can we still rely? Are we survivors, cast away by the current? Will we be left behind,no longer understanding anyone and being understood by no one?Must we rely on luck?

The General wanted people to take a chillax, but everybody just refused to take a chillax. When he decided to tell the white man in Algeria to go screw himself, the white man predictably got pissed off and threw a coup - again - it must the effects of living in Africa. Fortunately for him, nobody outside a bunch of imperialist crybabies (known as pieds-noirs for politically correct historians) actually gave a sh**t about Algeria by this point. So when in the summer of 1962 Algeria became independent and immediately turned into some third-world sh**thole, nobody in France cared all that much about it, besides, of course, the crybabies who were mightily pissed at the General. So pissed that a few of them became terrorists in a thing called the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS), which they probably got from a cheap sci-fi flick. The OAS tried to kill the General, but ultimately when they realized that their supporters included nobody besides an old fascist lawyer and a one-eyed Breton pirate, they went away.

Meanwhile, the General's enemies on the left (and even the right) were starting to dislike him. Stalin United FC, of course, was never a big fan. But originally originally he got support from the Socialists; the right-wing centrist Christian democrats who governed with the left but whose voters were right-wing; and the "moderates", who, in the time honoured tradition of French conservatism, were usually the opposite of what their official name was (in this case, they were reactionaries, collabos or pretty right-wing conservatives). This was quite necessary, because besides of de Gaulle himself, the Gaullist party - the tinpot named UNR - consisted mainly of reactionaries, idiots or tools (mostly of tools; see Debré, Michel). In 1958, in the legislative elections, the General's fan club had had won only a third of seats. The 'moderates', who sometimes masqueraded as 'independents' (a word which, in France, has usually indicated nutjob reactionaries), won a quarter of the seats. Hence the need to play nice with the 'moderates'. Deep down, de Gaulle didn't like the 'moderates' very much.

The General also was a big fan of "going to the people", which is to say, bypassing the old geezers in Parliament and asking the true-blooded, patriotic men and women of la France profonde (a nice way of saying inbred rednecks in rural places nobody cares about) what they thought of his ideas. He was a big fan of the idea of holding referendums on just about everything. If he could have, he would have organized a referendum on whether or not he should take a crap now or wait a bit. The problem with all this was that the retirement home Parliament didn't like the idea of being bypassed by a bigger-than-life figure like the General himself. The Corsican deputies (in all cases, their family had held the seat since the 1300s) told tall tales about Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte who had been elected President by the crazy populace and then seized power for himself.

The Stalinists needed no convincing on this matter, because they were sure he was a fascist. The 'moderates' and left-wing right-wing centrist left-wing right-wing Christian democrats got peeved when the General talked about Europe. Everybody (besides the Gaullist fan club) got mightily pissed when the General had the swell idea of (illegally) amending (his) constitution to get the people to directly elect the president. Everybody threw a hissy fit, passed a non-confidence motion in the government and got together to tell the General to go screw himself.

Unfortunately for them, 62% of the French people disagreed with their point of view and gave the General nice win.

By 1965, the time came for the first direct election of the President since 1848. Charles de Gaulle didn't care much and only announced his candidacy a month before the election. Of course, he considered his opponents to be useless jokes and he did not feel the need to waste time campaigning. On the left, the first potential candidate to emerge was Gaston Defferre, the mayor of Marseille (a position, which, of course, is only granted to criminals or people who could become criminals because it is the same office as mafia boss of the city of Marseille). Defferre, who was an inoffensive centrist moderate hero (like 99% of his party, anyway), was presented as "Mr. X" by L'Express, because he was the ideal profile of the candidate sought after by the magazine, run by JJSS - a wannabe politician. JJSS had wet dreams over the idea of creating an alliance between the Socialists and the right-wing centrist left-wing right-wing Christian democrats (known as the MRP, which does not stand for 'Machine a recycler les Petainistes'). The two parties were basically parties of moderate heroes, though the Socialists (known as the SFIO) were a tad more leftie and the MRP a tad more rightie. The only major difference being that the MRP kissed the hands of the Pope, while the SFIO were godless satanists. This proved to be deal-breaker, which made Mr. X a bit sad.

Instead of fooling around with the Papists, the Socialists decided to go for an alliance with the Stalin United FC, which was coming out of isolation. They settled on a non-offensive career politician who was a good contender for sacrificial lamb and pleased everybody. This man was one François Mitterrand, aka Tonton François. They misunderestimated (as Dubya would say) his political ambitions. He had served in about 600 cabinets since 1945, had been minister of everything; all this despite being an opportunistic collabo swindling. He was, above all, a guy with a huge ego (he probably worshipped himself) and really, really, really fond of power. He was a big opponent of the General's new republic, but only because he was pissed that he wasn't going to be in charge. His ego was crushed by defeat in 1958, and the media stopped caring about him. His alter-ego decided to car bomb his own car, in a way to force people to notice him. At any rate, he was a good enough opponent of the General which pleased the Commies, the Socialists and even the old squeaking Radicals.

Then came another young guy, Jean 'Jeff Kay' Lecanuet, the most Kennedyesque of candidates. In good French tradition, he was infatuated with the ways of those uncivilized racist Americans especially that dashing young man, Jeff Kay. Unlike Kennedy, however, Lecanuet would actually have bowed to the Pope and kissed his hands; because despite all his Mark Warner Sexgod looks and Moderate Hero status (though he did get the 'moderates' to support him), he was a member of the Opus Dei, which gave him something in common with Franco's toolbox, Luis Carrero Blanco. Unlike Kennedy, I also kind of doubt that Lecanuet banged every female in his reach. Finally, unlike Kennedy, his father was not some wealthy crook and he wasn't born with a gold spoon in his mouth.

In the also-ran category, the most prominent was the old fascist lawyer Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, whose campaign manager was a little-known one-eyed Breton pirate named Jean-Marie Le Pen. Tixier-Vignancour's big base was with the OAS and the crybabies, who considered the General a traitor. Besides him, you had a senator named Pierre Marcilhacy whose notoriety barely surpassed that of his village (which, ironically, was also Mitterrand's village), who ran on a centre-right pro-European liberal campaign but probably ran only because he wanted to show his parents that he could do something with his life. In the "how the flying hell did they manage to run??!1" category, the candidate was Marcel Barbu, who nobody knew. He ran as the candidat des chiens battus (candidate of beaten dogs) and cried at his own speeches. He could have been the first emo candidate in French history. But as de Gaulle said eloquently, he was a brave couillon.

Like Mitterrand, he used the television a lot to show off his good looks, while the General hated the little box. The General's animosity towards the little box contributed to his underwhelming performance in the first round. 44.7% against 31.8% for Mitterrand, 15.6% for the Mark Warner-John F. Kennedy hybrid, 5.2% for the old fascist lawyer, 1.7% for Marcilhacy and 1.2% for le brave couillon.

Between the two rounds, the General acquiesced to go in the little box. He once again faced a coalition of his enemies, with Lecanuet kinda-endorsing Mitterrand and the old fascist lawyer supporting a fellow traveler from the days of Vichy (also, the General was a traitor to him and the crybabies). Mitterrand could not stand a chance, after all, against the war hero. The General won, but with a fairly meh result (55.2%) for a bigger-than-life dude like him. Mitterrand won the right to return to full political participation, without the need to blow himself up in order to do so.

Logged

17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

(also, good job on mentioning that De Gaulle's 1962 ploy was unconstitutional).

Logged

Our numbers are dwindling. Our words are confused. Some of them have been twisted by the enemyuntil they can no longer be recognized.

Now what is wrong, or false, in what we have said?Just some parts, or everything?On whom can we still rely? Are we survivors, cast away by the current? Will we be left behind,no longer understanding anyone and being understood by no one?Must we rely on luck?

The General was getting old and a bit cuckoo on the side. In way, he was becoming like that old uncle you're ashamed of. In 1967, he pronounced to a crowd of delirious pidgin French-speaking Quebeckers the words "vive le Quebec libre", which created a diplomatic crisis. In a way, it was quite ironic that the General would say such a thing, therefore my answer to this sh**t is vive la Bretagne libre!. In 1967, the Gaullists almost lost their parliamentary majority as the Stalin United FC picked up points, as did Tonton François' new alliance of non-Stalinist lefties.

In May 1968, a ragtag bunch of spoiled petit bourgeois students in a university rose in revolt against a bunch of things including old people, the old General, the old life and other such fluff. Ironically, a bunch of these spoiled brats were Maoists, particularly amusing because the real Maoists in China would probably have considered them bourgeois intellectuals and have them smashing rocks in a labour camp in Inner Mongolia. They, of course, didn't quite grasp that fun little contradiction but despite that contradiction their mini-revolution of sorts grew in intensity. Barricades sprung up, universities were blockaded.

At first, the General didn't seem to care much. It was almost as if he was bored, because he found it more amusing to go to Romania to visit with Ceaușescu than to take care of the crisis. Instead, he followed the good French tradition of when something is sh**tty, leave it to the Prime Minister. In reality, the General probably wanted to force all the students back to work, while his Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, was a bigger fan of dialogue.

At the same time, Stalin United FC was not pleased with the student movement. Despite the fantasies of Americans, the Commies never actually were all over the students, in fact they saw them as left-libertarian, 'gauchiste, spoiled petit bourgeois brats. The curator of the Stalin Museum, Georges Marchais, styled the leader of the student movement, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, as a German anarchist. In fact, if Marchais and his senile boss Waldeck Rochet had been in Prague, they would have commanded tanks to kill off the students. On the other hand, Stalin United FC's working-class and unionized base was becoming restless, and against the will of the leaders of the SUFC's affiliated union, the CGT (Confederation generale des totos), a massive strike wave erupted in mid-May.

Deals between the government and the unions were rejected by the base of the unions, which sped up the chaotic situation further. François Mitterrand, furiously salivating at the prospect of power, came up with the idea of a provisional government with Mendès France, and because he couldn't keep his inner self under control, said that he was ready to become head of state. He probably wet his bed upon hearing that the General had eloped, like Mark Sanford, but this time to Germany and this time not to meet a secret German lover but the French military.

Whatever he did in Germany, he certainly crushed Tonton François' wet dreams. On May 30, he seized control of the situation, bowing (for the first time in his life?) to Pompidou's idea of dissolving the Assembly. Predictably, his first idea had been to hold yet another referendum on God knows what kind of vague fluffy bullsh**t. The silent majority made its voice heard with a massive pro-regime rally that day, complemented by the General's forceful speech that evening, which was, deep down, warmly received by the Stalin United FC which feared that the situation would slip out of its hands and into the hands of the German anarchist and the spoiled brats.

The silent majority spoke at the polls in June 1968, giving the Gaullists a huge majority - one of the biggest majorities ever won by the right. The Stalinists were crushed, Tonton François handed a slap in the face.

However, by this time, things had changed. The General didn't think things had changed and clung to his old visions. Growing increasingly distant from Pompidou, with whom he had disagreed, he replaced him by an old fake aristocrat, Maurice Couve de Murville, which nobody knew nor cared about. After the silent majority of 1968, people were becoming tired and were rather eager for change.

Bored, the General decided to hold another referendum. This time, his swell idea was 'regionalization and Senate reform', the details of which didn't actually matter to anybody and which nobody actually gave much of a sh**t about (it created some regions responsible for building parks with birdies, and gave the Senate less powers and placed a bunch of 'socio-professionals' tools in it in some corporatist fashion). At first, it was to be a fairly meh referendum which nobody noticed. There was, to be sure, some opposition, even on the right. Some criticized the idea of holding a single referendum on two separate issues. However, the referendum gained attention when the General, in his typical drama queen style, said that he'd leave if people didn't vote yes. In the past (well, since 1958 at least), such a drama queen style had worked because people were worried of what would come next. But this time, voters called out the drama queen's bluff. Pompidou was standing ready to take over if the old man left. The referendum, as every referendum in France held since then, was fought not around the question itself but around the guy who asked the question. Nobody gave a rat's ass about the question, which might as well have been "do you want the old man to stick around?".

Opposition coalesced. 48% voted yes, 52% voted no. The next day, the old man, his ego crushed, resigned. A guy which nobody knew about - hell, it is doubtful that even his own mother knew who he was after all - became President by interim. Alain Poher. A nice guy, but more adapted to the role of old Senator (which he was) or the nice grandpa who owns the cafe-tabac in the bourg.

The presidential campaign lasted about a month between April 28 and June 1. For us modern folks, who are used to presidential campaigns beginning five years before the actual date, the old people back then sure as hell didn't like long campaigns. How could they manage all of it? How could they manage all the bitchfests and the hissy fits which are hallmarks of our campaigns?

For the Gaullists - who after being the UNR, UNR-UDT, and UDVR became the UDR (all tinpot names, naturally) naturally, there was little question about who it would be. Georges Pompidou, a fairly moderate, popular and amicable old man with a weird face.

Meanwhile, the left was in sh**tfest after Mitterrand shot them in the face with his ambition in 1968. The SFIO was a pale shadow of its former self, no longer the vanguard of the Front populaire but rather a creaking old party of boring moderate heroes and led by an old party boss, Guy Mollet, who still called the shots. Stalin United FC was not too pleased with the SFIO's shenanigans and decided to call it quits with them. The SFIO's candidate was Mr. X and mafia boss mayor of Marseille Gaston Defferre. Like Warner-Kennedy-Opus Dei hybrid in 65, he became infatuated with the uncivilized racist Americans, this time with the idea of a running mate. He announced Pierre Mendès France as his running mate, or PM in waiting. Unfortunately for him, not many people cared about that. It didn't help that Guy Romney-Mollet didn't like him much and probably much preferred Alain Poher's centrist candidacy, which was attracting much support from socialists and 'no' voters.

It also didn't help that the Commies decided to go it alone, unlike in 1965, this time nominating Jacques Duclos, a friendly, fat and useless Stalinist robot. He nonetheless managed to run a good campaign, benefiting from his friendly fat face and stature as a resistance fighter.

Also on the left, the PSU, born in the late 50s as anti-moderate hero socialist party, but also a ragtag bunch of moderate new lefties, Christian lefties, Maoists, Trots, redgreens and hippies - and which had been the only party full-on behind the students in 68, nominated Michel Rocard, a moderate by most standards and especially within the PSU. Even further left, the lifelong enemies and rivals of Stalin United FC, the Trotsky FC-Young Hotheads Squad (also known as the LCR), ran their own candidate, Alain Krivine, a Trot who was a big supporter of Mai 68 but largely because he, like his team, were Waiting for the Revolution (as they had since 1917). In the "how the flying hell did they manage to run??!1" category, the candidate was Louis Ducatel which was a total nobody but apparently a Radical.

Poher and Defferre ran campaigns which were almost as incompetent, useless and pathetic as the Liberal Party of Canada's 2011 campaign (!). Naturally, both of their poll ratings collapsed. Poher from nearly 40% to 23% (good job!) and Defferre from 12% to 5%. Poher even lost the support of a few centrists (Jacques Duhamel, Rene Pleven) tempted by power.

The election was boring as hell. Pompidou got 44.5% of the vote, while Poher got only 23.3%, barely beating out the Stalinist robot who won 21.3%. Defferre failed epicly, winning 5%. Rocard got 3.6%, Ducatel got 1.3% and he managed to beat out the Trotsky fan club's Alain Krivine who got 1.1%. In the runoff, the Commies refused to choose between sh**t and sh**tte, and abstention reached a new high of 31.2% in the runoff. A runoff won, fairly predictably, by Pompidou, the candidate of continuity, with 58.2%.

Logged

17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

Our numbers are dwindling. Our words are confused. Some of them have been twisted by the enemyuntil they can no longer be recognized.

Now what is wrong, or false, in what we have said?Just some parts, or everything?On whom can we still rely? Are we survivors, cast away by the current? Will we be left behind,no longer understanding anyone and being understood by no one?Must we rely on luck?

The General was gone. In fact, the old man died in 1970 (without holding a referendum on whether he should be allowed to die!). And with the old man gone, Gaullism as an ideology, assuming there ever was such a thing, died - yes, it died, despite what every successive French right-winger has to say about that and despite the idiotic wannabe shenanigans of John F. Kennedy Jr. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.

Georges Pompidou had since 1968 been growing distant from the General and it would be tough to say that in 1969 he was the candidate of unquestioned loyalty, devotion and subservience to the traditional Gaullist ideal (whatever the hell that means). By nominating a fairly good-looking and fairly young guy, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, an inept politician but a popular figure, he showed his willingness to change.

Chaban-Delmas, always one for grandiose things, came up with the idea of a "new society" which, in the modern-day GOP, would make him a communist and possibly a gay Muslim atheist. This new society had the aim of increasing political and public freedom, liberalizing the media (up to then in the hands of the state) and the traditional vague French bullsh**t about "solidarity", 'participation', 'decentralization' and other stuff. There were some changes, especially in the media, but Chaban was both an inept politician and Pompidou (already a dying old man) a conservative for anything important to happen. Indeed, Pompidou didn't like Chaban, in part because Chaban was to his left, but largely because Pompidou was influenced by his two advisers, Marie-France Garaud and Pierre Juillet who were both conservative Gaullists.

There also was the matter that the UDR would look stupid carrying out a fairly centre-leftist program while the left was getting its act together. For the first and last time in their history, French socialists understood the lessons of an electoral defeat. Of course, given Defferre's Ignatieff-like performance in 1969, there was little option in store for Romney-Mollet and the old moderate heroes lest they fancied letting Leonid Brezhnev become the unofficial leader of the French left.

The SFIO got its act together, first by replacing Guy Mollet - first in appearance, later in reality; then by speeding up the alliance of the left-wing mosaic. If Mollet had ever considered Mitterrand an inoffensive sacrificial lamb in 1965, he got thrown a bucket of hot water by Mitterrand himself in 1971. Up until then, Mitterrand had not even been a member of the SFIO (if he did one good thing in his life, that would be it). Therefore imagine the sh**t on Mollet's face when Mitterrand and his fan club joined the new Socialist party - named, fairly boringly, PS - and also got Mitterrand elected to the new party's leadership!

At Epinay in 1971 - certainly the Socialists could have found a slightly less sh**tty town to hold such an historic event - Mitterrand was narrowly elected to the new party's leadership through an alliance with the kooky left-wing faction of Jean-Pierre Chevènement (who was still fairly sane back then) and a faction of the faction representing the SFIO (Mauroy and Defferre). Mitterrand was elected on a program of forming an alliance with the left - meaning Stalin United FC. This was quite a break for the non-commie left, which, since 1946, had been quite content with being a party of moderate heroes allying with other moderate heroes (the centre).

In 1972, the PS and the Commies signed the "Programme commun" which was a common platform for government founded in good part on pipe dreams, wet dreams, utopist leftism and lalaland. This platform called for nationalizing certain firms, increasing salaries, reducing working hours, cutting unemployment and a non-aligned foreign policy based on "peace". In all this fluffy living-in-the-clouds bullsh**t, the true objective of Tonton François was to supplant the Commies as the top left-wing party and in the long term politically annihilate the Commies. Commies have never been ones to be lucid and honest about their chances, and the Commies entered the deal with Tonton François that they would emerge favoured from an alliance with the social-traitors. Even if they had been aware of Tonton François' intentions, the Commies had little choice. Social-traitors were no longer behaving as such, it was hard to justify not allying with them now.

This Common Program was also signed by a faction of the Radicals. In 1972, the Radicals, a centrist party with right-wing politics but left-wing traditions, split between a leftie faction and a right-wing faction. The left-wing faction soon became a joke party of tools dependent on the good graces of the Socialist big brother. The right-wing faction allied in 1973 with the centrist opposition, by now known as the Democratic Centre (CD), to form a broad-based rag-tag alliance of centrists who didn't like the UDR.

Thus back to my original point. In 1972, Pompidou/Garaud-Juillet could not really afford to be leading a vaguely reformist policy. In July 1972, Pompidou got Chaban to resign and he replaced him with an old, boring, inoffensive conservative stalwart, Pierre Messmer.

The 1973 general election was fought in large part over the Common Program, which the right branded as the work of the red devil with the knife between his teeth. Obviously, compared to 1968, the left gained significant ground, winning some 46% of the vote and about 175 seats to the right's 300-ish. The rag-tag centrist alliance, the MR, in good part fell flat on its face.

By this time, however, was close to death. Pompidou began the great French tradition of hiding that you're a sick man, because holding on to power is way more important than being honest about your health. By 1974, Pompidou had taken the appearance of dying fat man. He died on April 2.

Some people were so eager to run for President that they forgot about the need to bury the old sick man. No, no, not Tonton François - he'd been running for President since 1971 - but rather Jacques Chaban-Delmas. Chaban announced his candidacy on April 4, less than 48 hours after the sick man died. Part of his shtick was to get first digs on the job, just as a first grader would yell "MIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNE!" when you try to steal his lunchbox. Of course, Chaban had the political skills of a first grader so it is unsurprising he'd act like one. Secondly, it was probably motivated by a desire to sh**t on the casket of the guy who had fired him from his job. I don't know about you, but I'd hold a grudge if I was in his situation. But, Jesus Christ man, have some tact! Did nobody in your entourage tell you that announcing your candidacy so quickly after the death of the old man is pretty, how should I say, low? Or perhaps Chaban thought Pompidou was a Wahhabi Muslim who must be buried before sunset on the day of his death.

Chaban did know that unlike Pompidou in 1969, the uncontested support of the UDR for his candidacy wasn't a given. As soon as April 3, Christian Fouchet announced his candidacy in the name of full loyalty to the General (the first in a long line of candidates since then who would claim loyalty to the General, Fouchet was probably the sanest of these and the one whose claim actually made sense). Then Edgar Faure, about as politically inept as Chaban, announced his candidacy. Faure had the added advantage of having no real fan club, having been a Gaullist for a bit less than 10 years and prior to that having been a Radical. Yet he too was salivating at the vacancy at the Motel 6.

Then came the prospect, far more potentially damaging to Chaban than either Fouchet or Faure, of a Pierre Messmer candidacy in the name of the old dead man.

Logged

17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

At any rate, on April 8, another man on the right announced his candidacy. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, a young (48) and good-looking guy, with the elitist appearance of a stuck-up aristocrat despite being only a fake aristocrat even though he certainly did marry a stuck-up real aristocrat. Giscard, which was actually his real name, had served as a fairly competent technocrat-like finance minister under the entire Pompidou presidency and part of the General's reign. Giscard was not actually a Gaullist, he was an old 'moderate' (one of the few 'moderates' who wasn't either an idiot, a tool, a collabo, a blowhard or a crazy old man) who had quit the 'moderate' party (the CNIP, Centre national des idiots et des ploucs) in 1962 after the CNIP had opposed the General's presidential election ploy. He founded his own party, the Independent Republicans which became a bit of sidekick to the Gaullists but which, a rarity in junior coalition partner politics, kept itself from becoming a satellite whore party to the Gaullists. Giscard, far more competent than half of the UDR's tools, got himself a good image. In 1969, he had opposed the referendum but decided against running for President. 1974 would be his year.

He announced his candidacy, saying that he wanted to "look at France in its eyes" (regarder la France au fond des yeux), which is a bit creepy and almost pedo on the sides. Giscard's profile was able to appeal the two kinds of people: firstly, the centrist opposition, which was clammoring to get out of its hole. Lecanuet, by now the boss of the CD - heir to the moderate heroish MRP - rallied the Giscard bandwagon with no hesitations whatsoever. He likely thought finalement, on ne prendra pas une autre débarque!. Secondly, he would also appeal to the Gaullists who disliked Chaban.

On April 9, Messmer announced that he was exploring a candidacy, but conditional to Chaban and Giscard bowing out of the race. Giscard, who called bullsh**t on Messmer's ploy, agreed to withdraw if Messmer ran. Chaban, too inept to understand Messmer's ploy, refused to bow out of the race. The shortest presidential candidacy in world history, that of Pierre Messmer, ended on the same day he announced it.

In reality, Messmer's aborted candidacy was the work of a trio: Pierre Juillet, Marie-France Garaud and their young protege and ambitious rising star, Jacques Chirac. Chirac had no particular talent at public policy but he had a crucial talent at betrayal and politicking. In this sense, he was quite similar to Mitt Romney, and shared a total and utter lack of political ideals or convictions with him. In another way, he was the opposite of Chaban. A man who Chirac, pushed by Juillet-Garaud, hated. Chaban would be the first person whom Chirac would betray (if you discount his wife, a boring annoying stuck-up and arrogant dipsh**t). Chirac, alongside three other incumbent cabinet ministers and 39 parliamentarians, would sign on April 13 the "manifeste des 43" which was particularly skillful in sabotaging Chaban's candidacy without mentioning it or him by name and in boosting Giscard's candidacy without endorsing it outright. Officially, the 43 'traitors' only lamented the lack of unity within the presidential majority. De facto, it stabbed Chaban in the back.

Unlike in 1969, the left was largely devoid of internal shenanigans. Since Tonton François had taken the reins of a PS which was no longer a joke party of old decrepit moderate heroes, his presidential candidacy in 1974 was a well-known established fact. It was also established fact that the Commies would back his candidacy, in the name of the Common Program. At the same time, however, Tonton François knew that the Commies poking their noses in his campaign was not exactly a good PR stunt. Therefore, as soon as the sick man kicked the bucket, he proceeded to tell the Commies to go fu*ck themselves. The curator of the Stalin Museum, by now the Stalinist-in-Chief, Louis de Funès Georges Marchais, must have been throwing darts at Tonton François' picture, but there was nothing the Commies could do about it. Especially that they were committed fully to the victory of the left. So they bit their tongues and threw themselves behind Tonton François. Who at the same time toned down the most radical of the left's rhetoric and kept the Commies locked up behind closed doors. Without abandoning the left, Mitt'rrand campaigned aiming towards the centre, just like Giscard.

1974 was the first sh**tfest of candidacies, though 2002 would put it to shame. It was quite a diverse field of personalities.

On the right, Jean Royer, mayor of Tours and a junior cabinet minister. Royer had the appearance and style of a Puritan recluse who grew up in an isolated monastery in the Himalayas and was panicked at the sight of modern society upon emerging from his cave. Indeed, Royer focused his early political careers on a crusade against pornography, probably because the only women he saw in his life were ugly as sin (well, Catholic homeschooled girls...). Royer took up the mantle of l'ordre moral, which translates into English as "reactionary moralfaggotry". Royer might have been a half-serious candidate, but instead he turned into a joke candidate partly because of his own workings and the workings of others. He refused to campaign until the official campaign began. He was scared of planes (TEH WORKINGS OF TEH DEVILS!!1) and campaigned using a rented train. Then came the fact that he was Santorumed, twisting his already pathetic campaign into a total farce. Ironically, Royer probably saw more tits in his campaign than in his entire life. His rallies were often disturbed by young men and women who chanted slogans such as Royer, puceau, le peuple aura ta peau (Royer, virgin, the people will have your skin) or the best political slogan ever, une seule solution, la masturbation. Nobody cared about the random bullsh**t he spouted (chances are, it likely concerned the horrors of sexual deviancy, porn, brothels, Playboy and so forth) but people did care a lot about the boobs of the girl who danced around topless at his rally in Toulouse for a quarter of an hour.

At the opposite end of the la grenouille de bénitier tourangelle was Arlette Laguiller, a young bank employee, nominated by a Trot sect named Workers' Struggle (LO). Laguiller was a bit of a nutjob with her talk of the revolution, but everybody came to love the good-natured and modest Arlette, who began all of her speeches with travailleurs, travailleuse. In the world of the far-left, unity is never possible, in good part because of fundamental earth-shattering differences in their interpretations of the class struggle and Marxist dialectic - stuff which nobody besides five petit bourgeois Trots understand completely. Therefore, LO's rivals, the more young revolutionary/Third-Worldist/Che Guevara fan club Trots aligned behind what would soon become the LCR, supported Alain Krivine, who had already managed to run in 1969 in the wake of all the Mai 68 sh**t.

France got its first green candidate in the person of René Dumont, a well-liked old researcher and agronomist. Like all French greens, he proved totally inept at campaigning. He campaigned a lot on a anti-globalist left end-is-nigh theme common to greenies, telling everybody that cars were bad and that they would all die within a few years from impeding ecological disaster.

On the far-right, a one-eyed Breton pirate by the name of Jean-Marine Le Pen, managed to run. Le Penis had recently founded his own party, the Front national (FN), in 1972. In this era, the FN was competing for the far-left for the title of "trite internal bullsh**t which nobody understands". The FN was divided between JMLP's "nationals" who were more traditionalistic conservative, Poujadist, French Algeria whinocrats in their politics; and the 'nationaux' who were in good part skinhead thugs, old Nazi collabos or traditional racists/fascists. The latter quickly left the party, and they backed Giscard who in good part was the favourite of the old far-right milieus in 1974. The remnants of the tiny FN endorsed its new lider maximo, the one-eyed pirate.

Let us not forget four other candidacies. The most serious of these was that of Emile Muller, the ex-socialist mayor of Mulhouse who was part of a small faction of old moderate hero Socialists who refused the alliance with Stalin United FC. In reality they were boring centrists who had no actual place in the political spectrum. Muller was a top-class politician compared to the three remaining jokers. Those were both candidates in the "how the flying hell did they manage to run??!!" category and in the category of bad jokers who thought that the random sh**t they believed in and the retarded ideas they held were shared by more people than you, your parents, your dead dog and your deaf blind grandmother.

These candidates were quite something. First we had a monarchist, yes a monarchist. Bertrand Renouvin, who was a young guy (31) who was about as interesting as any average high school philosophy teacher. The only good uses of monarchists in modern-day France are to provide fodder and topless pics of hot princesses for Point de Vue (see Princess Alexandra of Luxembourg), and Didier Barbelivien. If only Renouvin had realized that the only persons who would vote for him - behind a few old bourgeois reactionary idiots who have a picture of Louis XVI over their beds - would do so ironically because it's pretty cool to boast to your friends "i voted for a monarchist lol". Sadly, he didn't, and instead of amusing all of us with talks about princesses, princes, fairy tale castles, kings who lose their heads and the need for a restoration of the monarchy; he talked about the most boring sh**t ever. It didn't help that Renouvin was in fact a left-winger, seemingly more concerned by the left's bread n' buttah issues than hilarious monarchist sh**t.

Then we had two federalist candidates. Two?! That's already half of the entire "federalist" electorate in France! Federalists either want a federal supranational Europe or a federalized France (which are two great ideas, but I digress), two positions which already turn them into traitors to the FRENCH NATION, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE!!!!11 The candidates were Jean-Claude Sebag, the student and Guy Héraud, the old prof.

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17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

As the campaign carried on, Chaban slowly collapsed on the back of a terrible campaign - one focused on his fairly social rightist "nouvelle societe" theme and backed by old decrepit Gaullists. One time tied with Giscard, he collapsed to a distant third as the race turned into a contest between Giscard and Mitt'rrand. In the background, Chirac was busy at work betraying and destroying Chaban. Giscard and Mitt'rrand ignored his campaign, because as was so eloquently put, you don't shoot an ambulance. Chaban ended the campaign like Michael Ignatieff in May 2011.

In the first round, held on May 5, Tonton François fairly obviously came out on top by a wide margin with 43.3%. The fake aristocrat took 32.6%, Chaban took 15%. In a very distant fourth, la grenouille de bénitier tourangelle won only 3.2% of the vote (and the bulk of them came from his native department, where he took a third of the vote). Arlette won 2.3%, and Dumont only 1.3%. The one-eyed Breton pirate managed 0.75%, while Muller took 0.7%. Compared to 69, Krivine was crushed with only 0.4%. Renouvin found 43,722 jokers/ironic votes/old monarchists to vote for him, winning 0.17%. The two federalists split the whole of 0.24%. Sebag with 0.16% and Heraud with 0.08%. I think it is quite telling about my politics that of all presidential candidates in France since vitam aeternam, the one closest to my views won 0.08%. We are the 0.08%! We are the 0.08%!

Giscard and Mitterrand entered a close runoff. Mitterrand had limited vote reserves, with only the potential support of Arlette, Dumont and Krivine voters going to him heavily. Giscard depended on the attitude of Chaban (Royer, JMLP and Muller backed him). Obviously, he didn't come out of the first round thrilled and enthused by Giscard and had no pressing appetite to endorse him. It took a while for him to swallow up his pride and endorse Giscard, which he did on May 13. Giscard reassured Gaullist voters, and promised change without risks.

On May 10, both candidates met in a first ever televised debate. As is usual with these debates, nothing of worth was discussed and a useless sh**tfest of candidates squabbling under the supervision of two stupid French journalist tools emerged. If Giscard won, it was by default, when he answered some long-forgotten comment made by Mitterrand with the historic line of "Monsieur Mitterrand, vous n'avez pas le monopole du cœur" - telling Mitt'rrand that he couldn't call him a heartless conservative. A line which doesn't mean anything, of course, but which can sway the most stupid type of voters in any country - swing voters.

On May 19, Giscard was elected President with 50.8% of the vote against 49.2% for Mitt'rrand. On May 27, Giscard became President and named Jacques Chirac as his Prime Minister.

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17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

Giscard took office, with Jacques Chirac at his sides. Giscard owed part of his success to Chirac's betrayal of his fellow Gaullist, Chaban. Chirac, like Giscard, was also 'young', a theme which Giscard had played on a lot against Mitt'rrand in the campaign. However, Chirac and Giscard's love story proved to be about as durable as tribal alliances in Arabia or political alliances in sub-Saharan Africa.

Giscard was a bit of a stuck-up elitist (although nothing compared to his snob wife, who was the epitome of stuck-up), and had a very autocratic and centralist approach to decision making. Starting an unbroken trend which has endured since then, Giscard acted as if he was a monarch (perhaps he voted for Renouvin in the first round?). Giscard had certain ideas about what he wanted to do, he also had certain names he wanted in his government. He also was ambitious, aiming to restructure the non-Gaullist right to fit his tastes.

Chirac, on the other hand, had no talent at public policy (in fact, like Mitt Romney, he didn't give a sh**t about policy) but he had talents at back-stabbing which turned him into a young rising star. Chirac hadn't backed Giscard because he was a big fan or anything, but rather because he hated Chaban. Therefore, when he became Prime Minister, Chirac's only objective was to restructure the right to fit his tastes without bothering about Giscard. Imaginably, Chirac was not pleased when he discovered that Giscard intended on being an autocrat, and the two grew increasingly distant. Chirac, at the same time, was in the process of staging a hold-up on the old Gaullist party, the UDR, with the aim of transforming it into his own electoral machine capable of electing him to the Motel 6.

Unfortunately for both Giscard and Chirac, they took office at an unfortunate time. The good ol' days, aka the days where you could spend cash without any repercussions, the days of 1% unemployment and of 5% GDP growth; were over. Governments now faced inflation, debts, deficits, downturns, industrial decline and job losses; meaning they couldn't behave like before (don't tell François Hollande!).

Giscard, who had imposed upon Chirac cabinet ministers of his liking, intended to pursue an austerity-type policy aimed at deflation (which it achieved) but obviously resulting in an economic downturn. In 1975, Chirac woke up on the left side of the bed, and he started to dislike the austerity-type policy, arguing for stimulus spending. This was Windows Chirac 1.0, close to the Gaullist tradition of dirigisme (in 'American': big-government communism/crony capitalism). Giscard agreed to Chirac's stimulus policies, which stimulated investment in the industry but wrecked fiscal and monetary policy.

Increasingly, Giscard was grinding Chirac's gears. Still programmed by Garaud and Juillet, who had never been fans of Giscard, Chirac was convinced that he was becoming Giscard's tool. In August 1976, Chirac officially resigned. He told Giscard that he was considering opening an art gallery. In reality, Chirac had other goals. By 1974 he had already staged a successful hold-up on the UDR, becoming the party's boss, much to the chagrin of the party's old guard, especially that of Chaban, who held a very deep grudge against Chirac (more than against Giscard). They rather rightfully regarded Chirac as an opportunistic twerp.

In December 1976, Chirac created his new party - the RPR (Rassemblement des pourris de la République, RPR). In pure Chirac style, the RPR had no consistent ideology, besides electing Chirac to the Motel 6. Chirac was working on the basis of Chirac 1.1, which spoke of imitating the Labour Party in a travaillisme à la française. He denounced the socialo-communist left, but also the conservative and liberal 'right'. Put in simpler terms, he spoke like Mitt Romney, using vaguely moderate hero/capitalism and communism both suck platitudes (instead of Mittens' corporatist platitudes).

Giscard wasn't amused by the creation of the RPR. Giscard's party, the RI, had never been a serious party capable of existence on its own and without its backbone of old white men parliamentarians. He transformed, in 1977, the RI into the 'Republican Party' (PR), about concomitant with the transformation of Lecanuet CD into the CDS. In February 1978, to rival the RPR, the PR allied with the CDS, the rightie Radicals and smaller joke parties to form the UDF - Union for French Democracy, a mind-blowingly tin pot idiotic name inspired by a book written by Giscard (or rather, a book written by somebody paid by Giscard to impersonate him), a book which was full of the usual political bullsh**t, platitudes and fluffy uselessness about "recreating politics" and a bunch of other random sh**tte which makes no sense. Giscard's goal in this "book" was to present his political style as being above old bourgeois-proletariat class struggles and working to unite the "middle-classes" (a term which means nothing, of course) in some kind of common destiny. It took quite a lot of guts for somebody as elitist and stuck-up as Giscard to talk about such middle-class platitudes, but of course Giscard considered himself a semi-God (unlike Mitt'rrand, who considered himself as a God outright).

Talking of good ol' Tonton François, the shine was wearing off. Within the PS, he was facing renewed opposition after having lost two presidential elections and leading the PS-Commie alliance into an impasse. He faced opposition from Chevènement's kooky left and from a revitalized "right" led by Michel Rocard, who had joined the PS in 1974. The Commies had swallowed their pride and Marchais had shut his mouth (how hard that must have been) during the 74 campaign. After Mitt'rrand's defeat, they vented their frustration and displeasure at the state of the left. Despite these wranglings, and despite being a fairly terrible opposition; the left still did well in the mid-term elections in 1976 and 1977, benefiting from what has become the trademark of the French electorate: voting with the middle finger, or electing a President and then asking themselves three months later "why the flying did we elect him? HE SUCKS!!11".

The 1977 local elections were an historic victory of the left, both the PS and Commies, who both gained lots of new municipalities from the right. Unfortunately for them, their victory was overshadowed by what was happening in Paris. The office of mayor of Paris had been restored after 105 years, leading to the first real direct elections for the city hall in the centre of the civilized world. Chirac had built his political base by patting cows on their backs and acting as if he actually cared about poor peasants in some isolated, cold rural dump called Corrèze (which is hundreds of kilometres from Paris). But, of course, being deputy for a rural backwoods constituency filled with cows is hardly prestigious. So Jacquouille opted to run for mayor of Paris, both for the prestige, the political base it could provide, and the resources ($$$) which could be extracted through it using not-so-clean ways. The race in Paris was the most high-profile contest. To oppose Jacquouille, Giscard nominated a fellow gold spoon elitist, who, like Chirac, was also a carpetbagger. Michel d'Ornano, mayor of the snob hideout of Deauville in Normandy. Of course, the left also ran, but history doesn't care about that. All in all, Chirac beat Mikey d'Ornano by a comfortable margin in the first round and won a narrow majority over the left in the runoff. His ambitious gamble had paid off, and he now proceeded to empty the city's coffers.

Meanwhile, on the left, Marchais was staging a theatrical production aimed at extracting concessions from a PS which, he now realized, was a major threat to the PCF. Marchais' ploy was a re-negotiating of the Common Program, in which he demanded more nationalizations and measures which would limit a PS-led government's powers vis-a-vis the Commies and their friends in the CGT. Mitt'rrand, on the other hand, was increasingly confident of his chances without the added baggage of the Commies, and eventually walked out of Marchais' little play. However, with the end of the "union de la gauche" as a backdrop, the left entered the 1978 legislative elections. The right was too, but they patched up, temporarily and artificially, for the sake of blocking the evil lefties.

The election revealed a four-way split of the electorate, with the UDF, RPR, PS and PCF all holding similar shares of the vote - though the Commies were now surpassed by Mitt'rrand's PS. The left narrowly and surprisingly lost the election, suffering from poor vote transfers to PCF candidates from PS voters and centrist voters; as well as the fear of a left-wing government with Commie ministers under a right-wing president. Up until that point, nobody had tasted "cohabitation", which is a concept very similar to being forced to live with your ex-girlfriend who cheated on you. In this case, Giscard would have been forced to live with a Prime Minister Mitt'rrand.

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17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

This is really epic ! What a shame there are only 4 (well, 5 ) elections left to do.

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Our numbers are dwindling. Our words are confused. Some of them have been twisted by the enemyuntil they can no longer be recognized.

Now what is wrong, or false, in what we have said?Just some parts, or everything?On whom can we still rely? Are we survivors, cast away by the current? Will we be left behind,no longer understanding anyone and being understood by no one?Must we rely on luck?

The defeat of 1978 created internal problems for both Marchais and Mitt'rrand. The Commies faced internal criticism and calls for democratization of party structures, as well as significant criticism from ex-supporters for its subservience to the Kremlin (which got increasingly sh**tty PR). Keeping in line with its history, Marchais and the Commies opted for a return to Stalinism/Kremlin cheerleading. Being boring old Stalinist hacks is way easier than actually having to come up with actual policies which make any sense. Marchais also let out his anger, in his trademark theatrical style, against Mitt'rrand. For a while, it seemed as if Marchais was working with Giscard to pile on Mitt'rrand, who he accused of being a right-winger/social traitor and so forth.

On the other hand, Mitt'rrand's left-wing leadership was challenged by the party's right led by Michel Rocard who was less 1930s-statist and more favourable to decentralization and self-management. Mitt'rrand held on at the Metz Congress in 1979 with the backing of CERES.

The 1979 European elections - the first direct elections to some student council-like body filled with stupid hacks and failed politicians - approached. Chirac turned into Chirac 2.0, a faux-nationalistic/anti-European populistic right-winger. Of course, it wasn't really him who became Chirac 2.0 but it was rather Juillet-Garaud who changed him into Chirac 2.0 (he didn't care, his only goal being to try on different poses in the aim of winning the Motel 6 in 81). In 1978, Chirac denounced the UDF as le parti de l'étranger (a 'foreign party') working with the evil European elite for the 'enslavement' and 'erasure' of France. Unfortunately for Jacquouille, this little show didn't work. The RPR list got only 16%, way behind Simone Veil's evil European UDF list (27.6%) and even placing behind Stalin United FC (20.5%). Pissed off and influenced by his wife (Bernadette, who, as aforementioned, was a boring stuck-up arrogant sod), the Juillet-Garaud team increasingly got sidelined as Chirac transformed into Chirac 3.0.

That same year, Giscard got into some deep sh**t when the satirical newspaper Le Canard enchaîné, which hated Giscard, leaked the details of Giscard's past friendship with Jean-Bedel Bokassa, a clownish dictator in some banana republic in Africa, whom Giscard had just gotten overthrown. The problem was that, when the two had been good friends in the early 70s, the crazy clown Bokassa offered Giscard some pretty nice diamonds.

The pre-campaign was marked by the potential candidacy of Coluche, who was going to treat French politics for what it was: a big unfunny joke. Coluche, a pretty funny humorist, announced his candidacy in October 1980 with the slogan of tous ensemble pour leur foutre au cul avec Coluche (all together to kick their asses with Coluche). It does mean something about either French politics in general or the atrocity of all 'serious' candidates that polls showed than a guy who was running as a joke candidate outright was polling up to 12-16%. Neither Mitt'rrand nor Giscard found the joke very funny. They tried to shut him up, hell, even threatened him. He dropped out in April 1981 when the joke had gotten old.

In terms of serious candidates, Rocard also announced his candidacy in October 1980. He was far more honest, pragmatic, realistic and competent that Mitt'rrand ever was; but he was rather politically inept and his political skills fell far short of those of François Machiavelli. Mitt'rrand announced his potential candidacy by ignoring Rocard, thereby forcing him out without firing a shot. However, from this point on, both men would hold a profound enmity for one another. Mitt'rrand placed Rocard's name on his sh**tlist - the Mitt'rrand black list of people to eliminate. Unfortunately for Ricard, the people placed on the sh**tlist usually got dealt with successfully by Mitt'rrand.

On the right, Chirac's style was increasingly pissing off the old-guard Gaullists in the RPR (including Chaban) and the RPR ministers in Raymond Barre's cabinet (Peyrefitte etc). In June 1980, the General's former Prime Minister, Michel Debré, announced his candidacy. Since 1958, the politically inept Debré had gone through an interesting evolution from tool to troll. As the old man's Prime Minister, Debré had been the dictionary definition of a troll, wiping the General's ass with his bare hands and pissing his pants rather than asking his God whether he could go to the bathroom. Now he ran, claiming the old man's legacy (I guess he could justify this claim, given how much he had liked the old man's ass) and opposing the young opportunistic upstart Jacquouille. Unfortunately for him, the only people who actually cared about "upholding" a dead ideology were folks like Chaban (who held a deep grudge against Jacquouille) and old emo Gaullist stalwarts.

The jeweler, Giscard, waited for a long time before announcing his candidacy. He was in a rather tough spot in 1981. His government, and his PM, Raymond Barre, were both unpopular. Unemployment rose to 7% with the oil crisis in 1979, inflation rose, industrial output declined. Barre's liberal economic policies post-78 were rather unpopular with voters. At the same time, the diamonds didn't help the jeweler's case much either. He announced only in March 1981 that he would seek reelection.

In terms of small candidates, a lot of them had a tougher road to climb with the stricter candidacy requirements. Arlette ran again, for a second time. But Krivine failed to run again. The PSU, by now a pathetic shadow of its former self, nominated Huguette Bouchardeau, whose base was pretty much composed of petit bourgeois Mai 68-gauchiste/New Left libertarian/Trot types.

On the far-right, the civil war between JMLP and the 'nationaux' (PFN) behind Pascal Gauchon, prevented either from being able to run.

The left Radicals, which had become something between a joke party and a party forced to whore itself to the PS, wanted to be taken seriously so they nominated Boring Radical Notable #9843, Michel Crépeau (mayor of La Rochelle). As with all left Radical candidacies, this one aimed only at increasing their bargaining power against their big brother.

The ecologists opted to nominate something of an outsider, Brice Lalonde, who was opposed by some hard-core redgreens/deep green types, likely because Lalonde was a candidate who would not run a campaign into the ground (like almost all 'deep green' campaigns end up doing in France) by not campaigning on a 'OMG TEH END IS NIGH' type of doomsday scenario.

Mitt'rrand, Marchais and Chirac's candidacies began in early 1981.

Marchais ran a bad race-baiting campaign which would nowadays seriously rival Marion's bullsh**t. The race-baiting concerned both PCF municipalities trying to prevent browns from getting into social housing, and some Claude Guéant/Brice Hortefeux type amalgamation of druggies with immigrants.

Besides that, Marchais was criticized by some Socialists for his pretty radically anti-Mitt'rrand style (Mitt'rrand as a social traitor/right-winger/fake). To prevent any bad PR from this anti-PS campaign - the Commies were simultaneously insisting for cabinet ministers - Marchais decided to self-proclaim himself the 'anti-Giscard' candidate, something he must have found particularly witty (it wasn't really, he could have done better) because he put it as his official slogan.

Marchais was at his best with useless journalists who asked him stupid questions, to which he responded with his trademark wit, humour, sarcasm and downright bizarre funny erraticness. On the little screen, Marchais proved himself to be a particularly good clown and one of the best comedian-politicians in history (Sarah Palin would steal that title in 2008, before the entire GOP became a dark comedy squad in 2010). Marchais never liked the media, and was particularly brilliant at harassing Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, a retarded right-wing hack and waste of oxygen. It was particularly amusing when Marchais refused to answer a question just after yelling after journalists for not asking a question on said topic. Or when, like Palin, he gave a totally different answer than the question asked. Or when he bitched at the useless journalists for not letting him give an answer to their questions. Or even when Marchais concluded his answer by asking the journalists what they thought of a topic. That being said, the best line ever said to the useless French press corps was Marchais' vous êtes même des cumulards.

Mitt'rrand preferred a short and well-staged campaign focused on vague themes such as the old leftie changer la vie or attacks on Giscard's record. The Commies pressured Mitt'rrand to move left a bit, but he led a fairly moderate campaign. He promised nationalization, economic growth by stimulus spending, cutting working hours, public works and social justice. Mitt'rrand's emblematic slogan - La faillite force tranquille - was rather symbolic of his 1981 campaign style.

The jeweler's campaign kept insisting that things were going fairly well. But he of course faced much criticism. Chirac hated him - as we will see later. The left had lots of beef against his record. Once again, despite being an elitist married to an annoying snob, he tried to pose as a "citizen" and 'close to the people'. Takes some guts to say that kind of sh**t, really.

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17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

Chirac, meanwhile, tried to pose as a "new man" of "change" compared to the old Giscard/Mitt'rrand duo. By 1981, Chirac was know incarnated as Chirac 3.0 - a very cheap imitation of Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, sprouting the same bullsh**t. He denounced collectivism, the degradation of France, and state intervention over private lives and enterprise. Like his then-idol Ronnie, he promised tax cuts and other neoliberal crappola. Chirac, a great campaigner, able to make people believe that he gives a sh**t about them, staged a very modern/1980s campaign modeled on Ronnie and paid for by his old friend Omar Bongo, President of Gabon. It came complete with a campaign song which has now turned into something of a joke, because of its awful music and its atrocious lyrics (ensemble/maintenant/Chirac/president; in different orders). Chirac 3.0, of course, didn't actually believe in what he said, he only cared about pissing on Giscard as much as he could.

Chirac's campaign was good enough to destroy that of Marie-France Garaud (who by now had a grudge against Chirac but was probably too 'modern' for Debré and his team of 75 year old Gaullists) and Debré, who had turned cuckoo and proved to be a good troll candidate. Debré talked about stuff which made no sense (a government of national unity/parties suck/'combinaisons'), appeared to be an old pedo when he said that he wanted to film his campaign spot with "the youth" and apparently had orgasms during his campaign spot. Debré's candidacy collapsed from half-seriousness (5-6%) to lol-status (1-2%).

In the first round on April 26, the jeweler of Bangui won 28.3%, while Tonton did better than expected with 25.9%. The Bongo-financed cheap imitation of Ronnie and Maggie won 18%, a decent result. However, the CommieClown did very poorly with only 15.4% and started running the party into the ground. Lalonde did well with 3.9%, Arlette won 2.3%. Boring Radical Notable #9843 Crépeau saved face with 2.2%. On the other hand, the Pedo-Orgasmic Troll won only 1.7% and left the history books as a politically inept tool who wiped the old man's ass before turning cuckoo. He did beat Garaud, who won 1.3%. Bouchardeau won 1.1%.

Mitt'rrand's position going into the runoff was better than in 1974. Marchais attempted to troll him a bit, but his terrible showing didn't give him much leeway. He endorsed him on April 28. The other left-wing candidates all endorsed him quickly, but Brice Lalonde remained neutral. Giscard's fate was in the hands of Chirac and his voters. Chirac himself deeply hated Giscard, and did the very minimum by only saying that he would 'personally' vote for Giscard but left the choice up to his voters. In reality, Chirac probably hated Giscard so much that he voted for Mitt'rrand, which is something which the jeweler of Bangui alleges to this day.

In the runoff debate, Mitt'rrand was careful not to fall in the same traps as in 1974. He recycled Giscard 74's 'homme du passé' line by calling him 'l'homme du passif' which worked fairly well and remains the most important line in a terribly boring and trite exchange of platitudes. Giscard the jeweler was hit by an 'October surprise' when the first leaks of budget minister Maurice Papon's responsibility in the deportation of Jews during the war when he was a dirty scumbag Vichyist collabo.

On May 10, Mitt'rrand was elected President with 51.8% of the votes. Giscard failed to win reelection, in good part because 16% of Chirac's voters voted for Tonton and 11% didn't vote. At any rate, Tonton's election ended decades (1958-1981) of right-wing rule in France.

Logged

17:40 oakvale the people are bad and shouldn't be allowed vote whenever possible17:40 oakvale The average voter wants to end austerity, bring back hanging and put all immigrants in death

Our numbers are dwindling. Our words are confused. Some of them have been twisted by the enemyuntil they can no longer be recognized.

Now what is wrong, or false, in what we have said?Just some parts, or everything?On whom can we still rely? Are we survivors, cast away by the current? Will we be left behind,no longer understanding anyone and being understood by no one?Must we rely on luck?

The General wanted people to take a chillax, but everybody just refused to take a chillax. When he decided to tell the white man in Algeria to go screw himself, the white man predictably got pissed off and threw a coup - again - it must the effects of living in Africa. Fortunately for him, nobody outside a bunch of imperialist crybabies (known as pieds-noirs for politically correct historians) actually gave a sh**t about Algeria by this point.